


Heaven Ain't Close in a Place Like This

by Zebra (DQueenie13)



Series: Sprouting the Seeds of Redemption [1]
Category: Granblue Fantasy (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, If Cygames doesn't give me Predator content then I'll make it myself, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Seeds of Redemption spoilers, Tui is from Predator's fate eps btw he isn't an OC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:13:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23084548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DQueenie13/pseuds/Zebra
Summary: A third survivor of the Karm Clan and his protégé visit the hamlet a few weeks after Nehan and Seox's fight.
Relationships: Predator & Tui (Granblue Fantasy)
Series: Sprouting the Seeds of Redemption [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678195
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Heaven Ain't Close in a Place Like This

**Author's Note:**

> Besides Seox and Nehan, the fic makes some offhanded references to stuff mentioned in Shao's FLB fate eps, Fire Yuisis' fates, and Jamil's fates. Also, Tui hasn't been confirmed as a Karm Clan member but Predator's fate eps make it so obvious, I'd be more surprised if he _isn't_ one.

Blood splattered onto the ground, followed shortly by its source—a man whose sharply-dressed countenance now sported three large gashes on his torso, ripping out his entrails. Several felled men were scattered about, some with guns half-drawn and others completely unarmed. Their assailant had struck before they fully realized they were being attacked.

A single human woman stood among the bloodied forest clearing. In the firelight, her long blonde hair stood in stark contrast against her black form-fitting outfit. “Area’s secured, Tui.”

The grass and bushes behind her rustled, followed by the thump of a body hitting the ground. When she turned to look, she saw the corpse’s neck twisted beyond natural limits and their unseeing eyes wide open in shock. A middle-aged Erune man appeared from the dark forest with a casual saunter. “You missed one, Ema.”

His svelte figure and lack of weaponry belied his strength and skill. Though retired from assassination—the claws the woman wielded were once his—Tui was a member of the legendary Karm Clan through and through. He bore the clan’s signature greenish-gray hair, and his light blue eyes shone as he stepped into the illuminated area. His ears twitched, picking up for any suspicious noises before returning to their normal position.

“That’s not my name, Tui.”

“Not _anymore_ , you mean. Cut this old-timer some slack.”

Tui would use her old name and she’d chide him for it: Predator was long accustomed to this back-and-forth every time he called her out for a mission. Although she became his protégé in her quest for revenge against the Acier mafia family, their relationship began long before that. Under the guise of a traveler skilled in weaponsmithing, Tui befriended her late father before she was even born. It wasn’t until she started her quest for vengeance that she discovered he was a peerless assassin.

“Also, this is _your_ home turf. You know this terrain better than I do.”

“Tsk, tsk. A good assassin gets a grasp of their surroundings with a single glance. And you’ve been here before, so you have no excuse.”

It true that Tui had brought her here for training before. But it felt unsettling, and a bit sacrilegious, to linger in the ruins of the fallen Karm Clan. They were massacred by a prodigy too skilled for even masters of the art to handle. Since then, nobody else permanently settled onto the island. The only evidence of skydweller life on the island was an abandoned hamlet, the unnamed grave markers of buried clansmen, and the corpses of unwanted intruders that dotted the island.

The men they had slain were remnants of the Magasin mafia family, which had recently met its demise through a convoluted scheme between the Crew of Enforcers and the Eternals. The epicenters behind this scheme were both remnants of Karm: Seox of the Eternals was the very prodigy behind the Karm massacre, while Nehan was a survivor who was sold to the Magasin family as a slave. He sought revenge on both Seox and the Magasins, using a three-way conflict between the Enforcers, Eternals, and Magasins to weaken Seox (for a certain measure of the word) and dismantle the Magasins’ power in the skies. Afterwards, he drew Seox out for a one-on-one confrontation here in the hamlet of Karm.

Predator learned about this through the crew that she and Seox were both part of, and relayed the information to Tui, but…

“What’s the point in coming here if your persons of interest are long gone?”

Since that confrontation, Nehan retired to a remote island but was grievously injured and fell comatose. Meanwhile, Seox continued traveling with the crew. A few weeks had passed before Tui called her here.

“Hm? Was that directed at me?”

She tilted her head quizzically. “You’re the one who wanted me to get intel about them…”

He shrugged. “I was surprised that the developer of Serenity Heaven came from _that_ family, that’s all. I left the Karm Clan and its way of life behind long before they were born; their conflict doesn’t concern me.”

Despite his unflappable demeanor, in that moment, Predator felt he looked worn and tired. Truth be told, she knew nothing about his past with the Karm Clan besides the obvious parts. She could infer, however, that he left them on bad terms and lost his chance at reconciliation. Although he always spoke about the clan in a disaffected manner, he still held attachment to the hamlet where he grew up.

_“I’m sure the clan’s rolling in their graves now,”_ _he suddenly remarked with a chuckle as he watched Predator finish practice a combination of slashes using his claws._

_She stopped to look at him curiously. “Why?”_

_Of course, she already knew that this dilapidated village was his birthplace. The first thing they did was head to the chief’s house to pay their respects. But after that, Tui immediately brought her to the training grounds and didn’t speak a word about those that once lived here._

_“Running away after I finished my coming-of-age rite and only returning after they’re all dead… Just to give my claws to a human girl and teach her the clan’s secret techniques over their dead bodies? They’d skin me alive if they could!”_

_“You’re the one who brought me to this place.” Frankly, Predator didn’t think this place was so special that he_ had _to train her here. Sure, it was rigged with so many traps it saved him time setting them up himself, but she didn’t think there was anything here that couldn’t be replicated anywhere else._

_“This is where I trained as a kid; it’s only natural that I take you somewhere familiar if I’m gonna teach you everything I know. But seriously, did they have to rearrange the whole village after I left? It makes navigating this place such a blasted pain…”_

_“So… you aren’t familiar with this place.”_

_“Quiet, you.”_

Although he complained about how much the hamlet changed when he finally returned, Predator clearly remembered that he predicted every single trap in their path. Based on the states of the corpses of bounty hunters and thieves they passed along the way, some of them must have sprung the same traps—which wouldn’t make sense if this village was really abandoned. On top of that, he _somehow_ knew that all the traps were oh-so-conveniently designed to have safe spots for young teenagers like herself…

Tui displayed sentimentality in the strangest ways.

Picking up the conversation where it left off, Predator remarked, “Because Nehan shared a treatment for the symptoms of Serenity Heaven with the Crew of Enforcers, its danger—and value—has fallen significantly.”

A medicine peddler named Shao, another member of the crew, beelined for the Enforcers’ headquarters on Amalthea Island the moment he heard about it. He tried to play it cool, but his uncharacteristic insistence was a dead giveaway. Although it was a given that such a large crew would have someone personally affected by the drug, Predator couldn’t help but feel surprised by how interconnected everything was.

“No, no,” Tui snorted. “It’s just the opposite. If people think Serenity Heaven is safer to use now that there’s a treatment, demand for it as a recreational drug will spike. It’s supposed to give you a slice of _heaven_. There’re people who’d kill for that, literally.”

A brief silence hung in the air. “Was that directed at me?”

“No,” he smirked, “but you fit like a glove, don’t’cha?”

Several monsters’ roars tore through the forest, followed shortly thereafter by the crunching of bone and flesh. Evidently, they had found a group of corpses they left behind. Tui called them the island’s “natural clean-up squad,” and they were why Predator hadn’t bothered being subtle about slaying the Magasin men earlier. It wasn’t like any of them were left alive to report back anyways, but the large slashes left by her claws could be easily interpreted as the result of a monster attack.

“We’ve stayed here long enough. Follow me.” Without waiting for her response, Tui slipped away into the dark forest. Predator did as she was told, leaving the bloodied forest floor behind her.

As the sun peeked over the horizon, they arrived in another forest clearing, this time inside the hamlet itself. The mafioso remained outside the hamlet due to the myriad traps protecting it, so the spots of blood that dotted the ground, the bullet shells littered about, and the claw-shaped gashes on the trees could only belong to the other two Karm survivors.

“Tell me what you see.” She knew what he _really_ wanted: for her to reconstruct the battle and analyze what went down. Tui leaned against a tree while Predator circled around, quietly observing the remains of the fight.

“Based on the number of bullet casings in the area,” she began, “Nehan must have used several guns before he ran out of bullets. I assume Seox stuck to his claws. It appears that they kept their distance during the start of the fight. The bullets in this tree landed relatively far apart, so Nehan was aiming from a distance and slight adjustments are more apparent.”

“Very good.”

Picking up a glass vial on the ground, she continued, “It was probably Nehan who took whatever substance was in here.”

“Transencia would be my guess.”

Predator stared at Tui, who was fixated on the glass vial. “What’s that?”

“Our most potent self-enhancement drug. We use it in our coming-of-age rituals, and those who overcome its side effects will be recognized as adults. He probably took it to level the playing field.”

There was something left unspoken, but she decided not to pursue it. At the end of the day, she was an outsider to the clan’s affairs. Instead, she put the vial back down where she found it and picked a bullet off the ground. It must have hit its target: a streak of dried blood was smeared against its side.

_Doping, huh…_ Predator couldn’t criticize Nehan’s desperation. No matter how you looked at it, the daughter of an iron and steel factory owner turning into an assassin all for the sake of revenge was ridiculous. Pitiful, even.

Even though she never met the man face-to-face, she felt a sense of solidarity with him. Both of them lost their families, had their lives ruined by the mafia, and watched everything they’d ever known crumble around them. Her fist clenched as she remembered how cold and small she felt on her first night on the streets after her family’s factory was seized. How helpless she was when she finally scrounged up some scraps of food, only to return to her father’s lifeless body slumped against some crates.

She only became aware of the burning sensation in her nose and the stinging of tears in her eyes when she felt an additional weight placed around shoulders. Tugging Tui’s warm leather jacket closer around herself, she sank to the ground, burying her face into her knees. Normally, an assassin overcome by emotion was dangerously vulnerable, but just for this moment, she was safe to let her emotions flow.

At some point, exhaustion from the night’s battles must have taken over her. She woke up to the noonday sun, to the smell of roasted monster meat and smoke from a smoldered fire. Her mask and claws were taken off at some point and now laid side-by-side next to her. Tui’s jacket was still wrapped around her, but the sunbaked leather was getting a bit _too_ warm now.

“Rise and shine, sleeping beauty.” Tui held out a skewer of freshly roasted meat. “I turned away for ten seconds back there and you were out like a light!”

“Well, _someone_ always calls me out for midnight missions. I wonder who?” Predator leaned forward, grabbing the skewer with her mouth instead of her hands, and tugged it away from him.

With a laugh, Tui let go. “Yup, you’re yer father’s daughter alright. From falling asleep instantly to that voracious appetite.”

“Everyone at the factory was like that,” she retorted, still chomping down on the first piece of meat. “We operate on first come, first serve. _Especially_ when there’s free food on the line.”

Tui raised an eyebrow. “With how aggressive you guys are, I wonder why your dad got mad when I taught you how to use a knife?”

“Aggressive has nothing to do with it… you were teaching me how to kill a man.”

“Well, it’s the most useful thing I ever taught you,” he replied, a smirk plastered across his face.

As she tore off another piece of meat, Predator stared into the trees, deep in thought. After swallowing, she piped up. “Why’d you teach me to become an assassin anyways?”

Tui’s ears twitched as he turned to look at her. “What’s with the question?”

“There’s nothing _with_ it,” she shrugged. “But you made a lot of sacrifices and got yourself involved in mafia affairs just to help me.”

“So that’s how you see it, huh?” He gave a curt, resentful laugh as he propped his weight onto his arms and leaned back. “Honestly, my reasons are pretty selfish. They just happen to be for the common good.”

“Is that so?” Despite his claims, he was the one who talked about things like _justice_. All Predator wanted was revenge, so he already seemed selfless by comparison.

“Your dad was my best friend, and he wanted me to be your godfather. His job was risky—that’s just the nature of the business—and he wanted me to take care of you in case something ever happened to him. Then…”

He sighed, gazing towards distant clouds. “Then I heard that he got into a horrific accident, and that the factory was on the verge of shutting down. I came back to Agastia as fast as I could, but… It was too late. I saw his legs—what was left of them—and knew it was foul play.”

“But you kept that from me. And made everyone else keep that from me, too.” Bitterness crept into the young woman’s voice, which wasn’t lost on the man.

“What, we should just _tell_ a kid that her dad was murdered by greed? I wanted to deal with the Acier family myself once you recovered your spirits, but… In the end, revenge was the only thing that kept you going.”

It was true. After her father’s death, Tui and a few other ex-factory workers took her around Phantagrande in hopes that something would revitalize her. But after two years, there was no change in her demeanor, and she herself only had hazy memories of those times. Even then, she wasn’t sure if it was actually _her_ memories, or her brain forming an idea of memories based on what she’d been told.

The only thing that rekindled her will to live was the revelation that her father’s accident was set up by the Acier family, who purposely ruined the factory to squeeze every last drop of money out of them. In contrast with those murky days of despair, the day she found out was branded into her mind.

_Usually, Laura woke up her in the morning and hounded her out of bed. Today, however, Ema woke up on her own to the midday sun. She blinked, trying to gather her surroundings._

**_…I need to make lunch for dad and everyone else!_ **

_With a start, she leapt out of bed and began throwing on her clothes when she remembered—the factory was long gone. Her energy sapped out of her, and she felt tears drip down her cheeks down to her chin before falling onto her bare feet. Those happy days were gone, never to return._

_A sudden clamor arose downstairs, intruding into her thoughts. She heard light footsteps running up the stairs of the inn, a shout, then a thump closer to her door. The shout seemed to be Tui’s voice, and a more distant voice’s retort sounded like Laura, but she couldn’t hear clearly. Cautiously, she tip-toed to the door and pressed her ear against it._

_“—about_ her _father!”_

_Ema’s eyes widened slightly. **Something about dad…?**_

_“You don’t care about_ her _! You’re just looking for validation!” The cold rage in Tui’s voice made the hairs on her arms stand up. She’d never heard him so angry before—no, she’d never heard him angry, period._

_“_ I’m _looking after her well-being! She needs to know the truth! She’s never going to find peace at this rate!”_

_After a tense stretch of silence, Tui gave an exasperated sigh. “…Ema, I know you’re there.”_

_With shaky hands, she reached for the doorknob and slowly opened the door. Tui stood a few feet from the door, while Laura was frozen in her place at the top of the stairs. Timidly, she walked up to Tui. From the side of the railing overlooking the lower floor, she saw the other members of their group. David was brushing his shirt off and Adrian was rubbing his shoulder. Corwin was sprawled on the ground, staring blankly at Tui. Greg had a forkful of sausage half-raised to his mouth, frozen in place. Some bystanders had gathered to observe the situation, pointing and whispering among themselves._

_Laura looked between the two. “Ema…? Tui, how did you…?”_

_“We’ll have it your way, Laura. But let’s do it back on our airship. This isn’t the place for that.” Clearly ignoring her question, Tui turned to the rest of the group as he called out, “Heard that?”_

_Instantly, the room returned to life. The onlookers not involved with them dispersed. David hoisted Corwin to his feet and Adrian muttered something to his wife Rosea as he shook his head. Laura swerved around Tui with a wary glance, herding Ema back into her room to finish getting her dressed and helping her pack up._

_“Um, Laura? What happened?”_

_The brunette bit her lower lip, choosing her words carefully. Her expression was almost fearful. “It’s… we’ll tell you when we’re on the airship.”_

_No words were exchanged between the group as they shuffled onboard. They immediately filed into the biggest cabin on the ship, where they usually hung out and played games. Today, however, everyone’s mood was somber. Ema reluctantly sat in her plush, single-person chair (David dubbed it the “queen’s chair”), which was placed along one end of a rectangular short-legged table. Across from her, Laura and Greg sat in a two-seater. Corwin reclined on the sofa between them while David (and his dog) took up the rest of the sofa. Adrian and Rosea sat on the floor on the other side of the long table that was in the middle. It was so unusually methodical and proper, it put the young girl on edge._

_Tui leaned against the wall with a disinterested expression on his face. “Go on.”_

_“Um… So…” Laura, despite her earlier insistence, fumbled with her words. “So, Ema… We’ve come to an agreement—most of us, that is,” she remarked as she cast a glance at Tui, “that you need to know the truth about your father’s accident.”_

_“The truth?”_

_As far as Ema was concerned, an accident was just that—a moment of misfortune with bad consequences. Her father slipped at the steel mill and lost his legs, and thus his ability to work. But no matter how much they tried, the factory wasn’t able to keep up with its payments to the Acier family he took a loan from. The factory was ultimately seized, and its workers thrown out onto the streets._

_Corwin spoke up. “Remember Kiran, the new guy? The one who always kept screwing up?”_

_Ema gave a firm nod, biting her lip in frustration as she remembered his antics. After the second major mistake he made, she’d asked her father why he didn’t just let him go. He had only laughed, patted her head, and said that some things weren’t resolved so easily._

_“He was planted by the Acier family to do us in.” At Corwin’s remark, the adults’ expressions all darkened._

_“…Huh?” Some kind of **emotion** was welling up inside her, but Ema couldn’t tell what it was._

_“In other words,” Greg continued, “Kiran was sent by the Acier family to make sure the factory failed. He was messing up on purpose. He was sabotaging our sales. And he…”_

_Laura finished his sentence, her voice full of vitriol. “And_ he _was responsible for your father’s accident.”_

_Everything fell into place. Why Kiran was always messing up. Why her father said that he couldn’t be fired. Why they weren’t making money. The Acier family did it to leech them dry, and just when things started looking like it’d turn better for them… they set up her father’s accident. They killed him. They made him suffer. They were the reason behind everything._

_The **emotion** began spilling over as a choked noise came out of her throat and her vision blurred with tears. She distantly heard Rosea’s concerned “Ema…?” and Tui’s panicked “Laura, I told you this was—”_

_Without warning, the **emotion** burst free. A screech filled the air and a burning sensation filled her throat. Her hands, itching to feel _something _, tore at her hair and clawed at her face wildly. Voices were shouting at her, but the words held no meaning to her._

_“No, no, no, Ema, no!” “Ema, stop! Please, stop!” “Restrain her, I’ll sedate her!”_

_Strong grips on both her arms pulled them to either side of her body. Delirious, she heard noises being emitted from her mouth with her voice, but she had no idea what they meant. She flailed and kicked and twisted in a desperate bid for freedom, but the vice-like holds on her only grew tighter in response. A third body pinned her legs to the chair, and she felt a damp cloth press against her nose and mouth. Her body kicked into survival mode and she renewed her attempts to escape, but before long, her limbs felt too heavy to move and everything faded away._

Tui massaged the pressure points on the inside of his eyebrows. “Man… You were a real piece of work back then. One day, you were so lifeless that Laura had to feed you. The next day, you were clawing your face off and attacked anyone that came close to you. When you finally calmed down, you came damn close to cutting your own fingers off with how recklessly you were peeling carrots…”

Predator stared into the trees behind him as she fidgeted, unable to make eye contact. She didn’t like recollecting that part of her past, especially the time she pointed her knife at him in anger and learned firsthand that he didn’t go easy on anyone.

“Nothing we said or did could deter you from your dreams of revenge,” he continued. “Forget the Aciers—you were ready to die trying to get away from _us_.”

“And that’s when you decided to train me?”

The first few years she spent learning how to be a proper assassin were rough. She could still remember her first human kill, and how Tui had to nurse her for nearly a month after.

“I wasn’t about to let my goddaughter die pathetically. If you really couldn’t be dissuaded from taking revenge, the least I could do was make sure make sure you did it properly. Your dad might not forgive me for turning you into an assassin, but at least it gave you the motivation to live.”

After a pause, Predator tucked her legs in so she was sitting cross-legged. With a sigh, she remarked, “Stop beating around the bush, Tui. This has something to do with why you brought me here, doesn’t it?”

“I’m getting a little too easy to read,” he smirked. But his smile instantly fell, and he turned to look her square in the eyes. “Say we wipe out the Acier family to the last man. What will you do after that?”

“It’s too early to—”

“No, it isn’t,” he interjected. “Look at Nehan.”

“He grew careless, that’s all.”

A wry smile tugged at the corners of Tui’s mouth. “Sure, maybe a Magasin crony got him. But that’s what you heard from that crew of yours, right? Look at it this way. He got his revenge against the Magasins but lost to Seox. Maybe he was satisfied with that, lost his motivation to live, and pulled the trigger on himself. Either way, he hasn’t woken up because he doesn’t _want_ to wake up.”

“…Are you worried I’ll end up like him?”

“Until you prove that I have no reason to worry.”

He stood up, walking a few paces away and keeping his back turned towards her. This was how he expressed concern towards those he cared about: closing his heart off, keeping his distance, and making his expression unreadable, but also leaving himself physically vulnerable.

_What_ would _I do after all this is over?_ Her goal felt so far away, Predator never thought about what might come after. But if that came to pass, then…

Memories of the crew drifted into her mind. The crew coming to her rescue when she was led into a trap; Gran getting into a huff on his birthday when she made a single cake for him and Djeeta to share; Djeeta’s completely serious _“Do you cut up food with your claws?”_ during the crew’s New Year’s celebration; the time that Tanya tailed her for three days because she was too shy to talk…

All too aware of the faint smile on her face, she gave her answer. “I think I’ll continue traveling with the crew to the end of the skies. I made a promise to see their journey to the end, after all.”

“Maybe I’ll have to find the time to join that crew someday. They’ve quite the unique cast of characters. The Eternals, primal beasts, a survivor of the Urzhuwan clan, and the second daughter of the fallen Ditora Knights… I want to see what other conflicts they’ll be embroiled in.” Although Tui sported his typical unreadable smirk when he turned to face her and sounded more interested in her crewmates than her response, Predator could see relief in his eyes.

“It sounds like you’ve done your research already.”

A laugh escaped his lips. “Of course! I need to know what kind of people my goddaughter’s surrounding herself with.”

“People that are far too kind for their own good. If you show up in the dining hall and say you need food, and they’ll readily take you in.”

“Good to know they’re so hospitable,” he replied with another laugh. “It already sounds much more comfortable than this place ever could be.”

Before Predator could follow up with a snide remark, Tui started walking away. “Let’s go, Ema. We’re done here.”

“Tui… I don’t use that name anymore.”

As they left, Predator took one last glance at the traces of the fight between Karm survivors. Rather than a conclusion to a story, it felt like the conclusion to its prologue. The Magasins lost their hold on the criminal underground, but countless other aggressive mafia groups like the Aciers and the Zerion Knights were waiting for such an opening to appear. Halting Seox’s investigation due to Nehan’s condition was akin to making a dam out of twigs. If there were any other survivors like Tui that escaped Karm’s fall because they weren’t on the island when it occurred, news about Seox’s identity would reach them sooner or later—to say nothing on its impact on the Eternals’ image.

And then there was the crew that would be caught in the middle of it all.

_“I want to see what other conflicts they’ll be embroiled in.”_

Predator silently prayed that she could protect her beloved crew when that time came. No matter how bloodstained her hands became, it was a sacrifice she was willing to make if it meant that they could make it to the end of the skies.


End file.
